Nikola Tesla

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Nikola Tesla was an inventor most famous for his work on electricity and wireless transmission. He sometimes opined publicly on aeronautical topics and periodically said he was working on an aircraft. In the 1920s, he received two patents for an airplane-helicopter idea which he had not yet actualized.[1][2]

In 1911, for example, the Washington Post ran a story with the sub-headline: "Noted Balkan Scientist Claims to Have Perfected an Engine That Will Develop Ten Horsepower to Every Pound of Weight, and Promises Soon to Give to the World a Flying Machines Without Wings, Propeller, or Gas Bag. Characterizes Aeroplanes of Today as Mere Dangerous Toys Compared With the Safe and Stable Appliance Which Will Be used in a Short Time to Dash Through the Air at a Speed Now Unimagined."[3] He said:

My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and oblivious of 'holes in the air' or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air even in a wind for a great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action.

Tesla further told the amazed reporter that he would ensure the airplane's stability through "gyroscopic action of my engine, assisted by some devices I am not yet prepared to talk about."

Ultimately, he believed, wireless transmission of electricity would power airplanes with no need of a heavy onboard engine.[4]


Patents whose inventor or applicant is Nikola Tesla

Publications by or about Nikola Tesla

Letters sent by Nikola Tesla

References

  1. "Tesla Gets Patents on Helicopter-Plane: Wireless Experimenter Says His Invention is Ideal for Air Flivver." New York Times, 22 February 1928.
  2. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time, 1981; Barnes & Noble Edition, 1997: p. 201: "The patents on his brilliantly designed flivver airplane or flying stove—in today's technical literature the descendants of this craft (not to be confused with simple helicopters) are called vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOL)—would not be filed until 1921 and 1927 and finally granted in 1928. This is believed to be the only invention patented by Tesla of which, probably for lack of developmental capital, he built no prototype. The year the patents were issued the inventor would have been seventy-two years of age."
  3. Frank Parker Stockbridge, "Will Tesla's New Monarch of Mechanics Revolutionize the World?", Washington Post, 15 October 1911.
  4. Cleveland Moffett, "Across the Atlantic by Air: The Greatest Scientific Adventure of One Hundred Years", McClure's Magazine, May 1914. Quoting Tesla in an interview: "They will carry no engines and no fuel. Think of the saving in weight! They will get their power through the ether from great central power-transmitting stations. Such a station could be build today — it would take about eighteen months to build it — for one-fourth the cost of a single battleship, say three million dollars. The cost of operating this wireless power-transmission station will be about the same per horse-power as that of an ordinary electric water-power plant, where power is transmitted over wires, as from Niagara. One such station in America will be sufficient to operate a whole fleet of aëroplanes over an unlimited radius."


Names Nikola Tesla
Birth date
Death date
Countries Croatia, AH, US
Locations New York City
Occupations scientist
Tech areas HTA, Motors, Electricity, Remote control, Propulsion
Affiliations
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